Lizzie Breaks Up With The Internet
by Alyson Trotter
Summary: Lizzie Bennet Diaries: The internet had always been Lizzie's friend. Who knew that it would lead to this? Her family in crisis and the alienation of a man she very well could be in love with. She had always been connected until suddenly she wasn't. This is the story of how Lizzie broke up with the internet.
1. Lizzie Meets the Internet

The internet had always been Lizzie's friend.

As early as sixth grade, she and Charlotte logged into AIM on Lizzie's family's brand new dial-up connection. The internet was less scary back then. Talking to strangers was a novelty, not a danger (of course, they never told their parents). No one talked about hacking or malware. With a screen name like soccerchicks12 and no bandwidth for sharing photos, anonymity was a security blanket they never fully appreciated.

This was especially so for to two dorks with nothing better to do than dominate AOL chat rooms about the upcoming Lord of the Rings movie

For Lizzie, it was love at first connection. She could sneak in 15 minutes before her mother realized the phone was off the hook, but for those short, 15 minutes she was transported away from the crazy household. In that fleeting window she was able to find like-minded people with opinions about her favorite stories. She could briefly forget that Lydia had run up to their neighbor Bryce and told him all about Lizzie's secret crush.

Of course, that was only the beginning.

Along came broadband, Neopets, self-taught HTML, MySpace, a vendetta against MySpace, LiveJournal communities, an addiction to Mugglenet and a YouTube subscription list that grew and grew and grew.

All her young life, she had taken information from the internet in exchange for bits and pieces of herself; her time, her devotion, personal facts on message boards, her interests listed on profiles. She even formed a few tenuous friendships in spite of geography and differing time zones.

Lizzie absorbed it all and barely paused before registrating for all mass communications classes her freshman year of college.

It was impossible to mark the moment the real world and her Internet world became one. While she had always lived with one foot online, there was a conscious separation and her online world was hers alone. In her zeal to post the first Lizzie Bennet Diaries video, Lizzie didn't consider how carefully she had compartmentalized the two or how precarious the separation might be.

Yes, she framed the videos as a school project that concerned Lizzie Bennet alone. She really had planned to provide her perspective only, just as any traditional diary would.

But then Lydia's intrusions provided conflict (no matter how much they annoyed Lizzie) and Jane was a sounding board that provided the sort of depth Charlotte had been concerned about. The results were too good to give up. They had an audience. Lizzie was producing material that others responded to. They were contributing to the greater internet.

She felt good about what she was doing. A small part of her had worried she would always be a Rob Gordon for the internet age. You know, the same guy from "High Fidelity" who said:

"I guess I think I've always been a professional critic or some sort of professional appreciator or something. And I just wanted to do something new, put something new out into the world, you know, kind of really put my money where my mouth is."

Lizzie had finally put her money where her mouth was. But she had never expected it to come to this; Her family in crisis and the alienation of a man she could very well be in love with.

She had always been connected until suddenly she wasn't.

This is the story of how Lizzie broke up with the internet.


	2. In Flight

It was Darcy's doing, in a way. After all, he was the one who got her a flight without wifi.

It all began when his driver pulled up to the departures curb at San Francisco International Airport and handed Lizzie her boarding pass. They had made the trip to the South Bay in record time and Lizzie was sure he had broken at least half a dozen driving laws to get there in time for her 2 pm flight. She couldn't help, but wonder what Darcy had said or, god forbid, paid to make sure she made it.

Just a half hour earlier, Lizzie had walked out of Pemberely Digital in an anxious fog. Her body was ready to act, to do, to fix, but it was impossible to settle her mind on any one course of action. She spent the entire drive on her phone, texting Charlotte, tracking down Jane, but mostly torturing herself with the website. She watched the changing numbers. No matter how hard she stared they continued to drop, as if the stupid video were uploading oh so slowly to some distant server.

Never had she felt so useless. Never had she been so compelled to chuck her phone out the window. Never had she wanted so badly to turn back time in the naïve hope that this would all go away.

Everything had gone spectacularly wrong in record time. A small, but persistent voice was in the back her head was sure that was the last she would see of Darcy.

"Love Her Madly" crackled on the radio and filtered through the car speakers. Lizzie closed her eyes in concentration. She needed to focus. But each thought was a new distraction, every outside stimuli a roadblock from finding a solution.

_Don't ya love her face_  
_Don't ya love her as she's walkin' out the door _  
_Like she did one thousand times before _

_Don't ya love her ways _  
_Tell me what you say _  
_Don't ya love her as she's walkin' out the door_

Lizzie left a fifth voicemail for Jane. At this point she could care less that the driver was privy to all the details of Lydia's indiscretion. It was about to be the entire internet's business, what did it matter if one more stranger was aware of the most intimate details of her family. It's not like she had made a habit of censoring herself in the past.

Her head was pounding when the driver turned in his seat and handed her her boarding pass. He reminded Lizzie of her dad. She had the overwhelming urge to tell him everything and to ask him what she should do next.

Lizzie let out a short, surprised laugh when she read the top of the boarding pass, Southwest flight 255. Suddenly she was back at Netherfield arguing with Darcy about, of all things, the merit of Southwest versus Virgin America. It was true, she had managed to turn everything into an argument. It was a wonder anyone could stand to be in the same room as the two of them back then.

Darcy had mentioned that he only flew Virgin America. He probably said it in passing, but to Lizzie it reinforced everything she thought she already knew about him. Of course he only flew on the most hipster airline in the country. Virgin America, with its weird mood lighting and wifi on every flight. It was the same airline that only catered to two dozen cities and featured a TV on the back of every seat to minimize the necessary human interaction. Lizzie found this especially ridiculous considering the flight from LA to San Francisco clocked in at a whopping 40 minutes – a fact she harped on as Jane was wont to remind her.

Of course she had to tell him how ridiculous she thought he was for being too good for the airline that catered to the middle-class. She lauded cattle-call seating for getting rid of first-class and democratizing coach. She teased him about his dislike for meeting new people and wondered aloud if he ever bought the seat next to him to discourage any plebeians from entering his personal bubble.

She asked if he even bothered to disconnect his wifi between the airport and the airplane.

Lizzie grabbed the boarding pass and made it to Gate 14 as they called her name over the loud speakers.

She was barely seated when the flight attendant reminded all passengers to power down their electronic devices.

Just like that she was cut off. She was out of contact, out of touch, physically separated from the crisis on the ground.

She turned her phone in her hand, staring at the black screen. It was such an innocent device when it wasn't conveying messages of doom and despair. The first ten minutes of the flight were the longest she had gone without checking the website. It was the first time she felt like she could actually breath.

The fog began to dissipate in Lizzie's mind. She sat back in her seat and peered out the window over her neighbor who was already fast asleep.

The world looked reassuringly small from up here. Her body was still anxiety ridden, but it was less debilitating in that moment.

For once she was thankful to be on a flight that didn't hand out wifi like a free packet of salted pretzels.

Lizzie began to plan her next moves; her shuttle from the airport, how to confront Lydia, the best way to keep her mother in the dark.

She stared down at the water below. Lizzie would be plugged back in soon enough, for now she silently thanked Darcy for everything he had done.


	3. Confrontation and Consequences

Lizzie was sure that talking to Lydia was the answer. Getting home and talking to Lydia with reason and compassion, some logos laced with pathos, was the fastest way to right her own wrongs. To amend for being so disconnected from everything going on in her sister's life.

Her anxiety from Pemberley to here was about getting in touch with Lydia, the rest would follow easily.

Which all goes to say – Lydia's reaction was a surprise.

Lizzie barely had time to blink before Lydia fled the room and raced up the stairs, her door slamming shut as if this were another one of her and Lizzie's bickering matches. The reality was this was so much bigger than the two of them.

Lizzie's anxiety heightened. The urgency was still there, but her outlet was gone. Getting to Lydia was no longer point B of her plan. Point B was now a nebulous concept that floated just outside Lizzie's grasp. The den felt simultaneously cavernous and smothering. It was like being buried alive, but with too much space.

For the next thirty minutes Lizzie paced between her room to Lydia's, pressing her ear to the closed door to make sure she could still hear her soft, hollow sobs. All the while she refreshed her phone's browser with the naïve hope that this was all a prank or a dream or a weird glitch in the space between internet and reality.

After all, there was a difference between the two. Right?

What Lizzie wouldn't give to have Jane home. This wasn't her wheelhouse, her forte or anything thing close to her expertise. She was the analytical one. She was the one who maybe spent more time judging a situation from afar than actually participating in it. The point was, she wasn't the one who could comfort Lydia best – even though she was the one with the most responsibility to do so.

Pacing and refreshing weren't enough. Lizzie went back into her room and booted up her laptop, tapping her leg impatiently as the screen loaded.

There was only one thing she was good for in situations like these. Research, information, facts and data were well within her wheelhouse. She was just weeks away from holding a degree that told the world she excelled at it. Research was her defense against her mom's relationship diatribes and she never failed to pull out a well-researched fact when arguing with Darcy. She only hoped that information could be as strong an offense as a defense.

The site was even more repulsive on a laptop screen. Something about the low-budget, 1999 level HTML made the entire thing that much more offensive. The textured graphics, the glittering text, the tiled background. These weren't details that mattered, but they managed to enrage Lizzie even more. How quickly the site had been slapped together by scheming assholes without a bit of thought for a young woman they cared nothing about, let alone her lack of consent to the transaction. She was a name on the register. After all, sex sells.

The countdown clock sent her mind racing. Time was ticking. She had to start moving.

Lizzie swallowed her anger enough to research Novelty Exposures. It was a Van Nuys based company, no surprise there. She had grown up hearing jokes about the San "Pornando" Valley. It was one of those things kids learned about in middle school and couldn't let go of. It had always felt like an urban legend, but now? Now it was her reality.

She tried to look up the domain owner, but the address belonged to a parent company in New York. Her skin crawled as she imagined someone signing off on the domain name, not even batting an eye as they signed a check to one George Wickham. Her stomach churned and her throat tightened.

Unfortunately the amateur website design didn't extend to the company's ability to hide their asses. Clearly they spent their money on lawyers and not content creation because Lizzie couldn't find any actual way to contact the company.

She went back to the website. The numbers continued to fall, the image of Wickham and Lydia wrapped around one another made her physically sick. Time was still ticking.

There was internet silence on Wickham's end. Nothing about the tape, nothing posted by George period. Lizzie could barely read the replies between him and Lydia just a couple days earlier. She couldn't last more than a minute on their video in Vegas. Facebook was a wasteland.

Facebook did reveal one thing: News travels fast on the internet.

Lizzie's inbox was full of Facebook messages from "well-meaning" high school "friends" who always knew this might happen with Lydia. They wanted Lizzie to know that they were there for her even though her sister had humiliated the family and ruined her life forever.

Lizzie was halfway through decimating her social network when she finally deactivated her profile and slammed her laptop shut.

Shit.

That had accomplished nothing. If anything it made it clear just how out of control the situation had become. George had taken advantage of Lydia and knew well enough to cover his tracks. There was nothing Lizzie could do and yet here she locked up in her own room on the internet while her sister cried across the hall.

Lizzie stared at her closed laptop, the power light blinking on and off mockingly.

She shoved it under her bed and went down into the kitchen. A few minutes later she at Lydia's door holding the mug that Lydia had painted for Lizzie's 10th birthday. It was covered in so many splotches of colors that some areas had bled together in the kiln and turned brown.

Lizzie knocked softly at the door, knowing full well Lydia wasn't ready to answer. She lowered her to the ground, careful to keep the tea from spilling. Lydia might not be ready, but that wasn't the point. Lizzie would be there when she was ready.

She would have tea. She would be a sister. That's what she should have been doing all along.


	4. Severing Ties

Bit by bit Lizzie's connection to the internet became more tenuous. Each day she took another step toward severing ties completely. Within a week she was cut off completely and it was as if nothing existed outside the physical walls around her.

She disconnected the wifi on her phone and turned off the 3G. Not that it mattered, but she deleted her Twitter and Facebook apps. Soon enough her phone was just a phone. She went to send a mass text to let everyone know she was only reachable by phone, but then realized the only people she really cared to tell were Charlotte and Jane. She felt like she was in constant contact with hundreds of people over the past year, but now...now there were just so many people she could face.

Her last day online consisted entirely of watching Lydia's channel. She attacked the project with internet tunnel-vision. She was there for one thing and one thing only and once that was finished Lizzie was prepared to swear off the internet for the rest of her life.

It was partly an act of self-preservation. The internet which she had always defended with all her heart had betrayed her. To the layperson that probably sounded dramatic, but it was the truth.

Lizzie had always lauded the internet's ability to connect her to the greater world. All the worries people had (identity theft, viruses, privacy) were the result of ignorance, she supposed. She had campaigned for Internet Neutrality in middle school, protested SOPA in college and advocated for home-made content creation all her life. But now Lizzie knew the danger of the internet all too closely. And if the internet meant the possibility of seeing George Wickham's face one more time? Well then, the decision was easy.

Most importantly, she needed to get away. Or more precisely, she needed to come back. She needed to be here – home. She had to be fully home.

She went as far as disconnecting the router, but that only raised the suspicions of her dad. Lizzie knew they couldn't hide the situation from her parents forever. To be honest she was relieved to let someone else in on what was going on. They needed new resources, access to lawyer friends and another mind at work. Not to mention a parent, a real live adult, to try and convince them it will all be okay…eventually.

One thing was clear; Lizzie had to keep posting her videos. She knew that. It was her fault this happened. It didn't matter what Darcy said or how tenderly he said it. Lizzie could still feel his large, warm hand as it grazed along her back. Even days later it was a source of comfort, but its memory couldn't absolve Lizzie of her guilt.

Lydia would never have vlogged if it hadn't been for her. She wouldn't be "YouTube Sensation Lydia Bennet." She wouldn't have met George, George wouldn't have used her for revenge against Lizzie, and Lydia wouldn't have felt so alone to be vulnerable to his lies.

Lizzie had to keep posting if only to remind the internet that things were still far from fixed. The website was still up. Lydia was still broken. She was a real person, not just someone that the internet could use as a punching bag. The internet needed to know that.

As much as it hurt Lizzie to face her own faults on a bi-weekly basis, she was the one with the audience and a heart hat wasn't broken. Yes, it was bruised, slightly mishandled, but playing the victim was not in her cards at the moment.

She sent Charlotte each video on Dropbox, the one time she allowed herself to use the computer and even then she would only use the family desktop. The hardware so much older that uploading was a form of punishment that felt fitting to her crime. She sent each one with brief notes on what to keep and what little to edit. Lizzie knew Charlotte would follow her directions without question. Maybe a clarification about how much to keep in, but Lizzie had made it clear she was determined to post it all as is.

Charlotte only questioned Lizzie's decision to keep posting once.

Lizzie hoped that Charlotte could hear her resolve through her choked response.

As far as Lizzie knew, the videos were sent off into a void – into another dimension in another time and space. She felt no need to playback the videos after filming. They were too fresh and sharing them wasn't about making herself appear a certain way. Not anymore. These videos were probably the most journalistic; she couldn't help but think bitterly. She'd always had a problem with editorializing. Her journalism ethics professor would be _so_ proud.

For the first time in years she was fully present at home. She started helping out with dinner in the evenings. Her mom was so shocked the first time that she simply stood and stared as Lizzie began chopping an onion. She spent Saturday morning reading alongside her father in the den and anytime Lydia made an appearance she was ready to drop anything and everything.

Yes, there might have been some smothering, a little treating Lydia like a piece of damaged glass. At one point Lydia snapped at Lizzie to give her at least a three foot bubble of personal space and a reminder that privacy was a normal thing when someone went into the bathroom. Lizzie might have been over zealous, but she was trying.

She was acutely aware of the dynamic between herself and her family. The space she occupied. The precarious nature of her relationships and the people she had blasted across the web.

Things were far from fixed, but every once in a while the whole family would wander into the living room at the same time. Lizzie would look up from her book and see her mom reading a magazine in the corner and Lydia curled up into Jane's side on the couch as they watched whatever was on Bravo. Her dad would catch her eye over the pages of his Steven King novel and with a small raise of his eyebrow she'd know. There was more to them than what people saw online.

It would be okay. They would be okay.


	5. Tuning In

The site is gone.

No matter how many times Lizzie repeats the phrase her body refuses to believe that it's true. That's the only explanation she has for the insomnia that settled in last night. Or the fact that she is still up at 1 am despite three cups of chamomile tea and an listening to her mom's relaxation tapes under the blue wash of that stupid aquarium.

She gives up and punches the power button on the CD player.

This revelation has done little to dampen her usual skepticism. There has to be more to this site being taken down. Sleep is elusive and her mind ramped up as if it knows that there's something she's missed, but she's lost without her usual tools for research and investigation.

Because the internet? The internet is not somewhere Lizzie is willing to tread. Not yet.

It's like how the longer you wait to get a cavity filled; the harder it is to go to the dentist. At least in that scenario you know what you're getting yourself into: some Novocain, a little drilling, that awful sound of grinding metal on teeth.

The internet is Lizzie's Schrodinger's cat and after the last few videos, well, comments and Tweets have a broader spectrum then dead or alive.

And maybe there's more to it. Without the distraction of taking down the site or following Lydia around the house, Lizzie realizes she's back where she began. It's not terrible. She is happy to be home, glad even. Happy and glad for what the last few weeks have given her with her family.

But she has no idea where to go from here.

There are so many loose ends she has ignored. Things like her thesis, the state in which she abandoned Prof. Reynold's apartment and plenty of paper work with PD human resources. Not to mention a conversation that was cut off so quickly she didn't even realize it until she had boarded the plane and silenced her phone.

Now it's been two weeks and not a peep from the enigmatic William Darcy. If it weren't for the video evidence, she could have sworn she dreamt the whole thing.

Then Jane reconciles with Bing and leaves for New York and Lizzie's situation is thrown into a stark light and it's time to get some perspective. She can't help but think how convenient it is that she recorded every moment in the past year.

She plugs in her external hard drive and opens the folder "LizzieBennetDiaries_uploaded". It's the complete set of videos that are being streamed across the world at this very moment, but these are hers, the originals. Everyone else is watching a duplicate and as identical as each upload must seem, there is something about these copies that are more personal. After five hours of editing and troubleshooting and rebooting and computer crashing, file names tend to reflect the mind state of the creator.

Lizzie's stomach sinks when she reads "Final for real this time – w/ Lydia leaving." It's the file that would eventually be posted to YouTube as "How to Hold a Grudge." A series of editing decisions made after she decided it wasn't worth confronting Lydia. She scrolls down through the thumbnails to get a sense of scope before diving in. Freeze frames of Colins and Colins swim past and part of her wonders what this will really accomplish.

Her stomach sinks when she reads, "Ver. 25 – USE THIS ONE." She remembers the long night spent editing what eventually became "Corporate Interview." How many times she cut around Darcy's compliments to herself. Moments she toyed with saving for her eyes and ears only. The several moments where her face unwittingly revealed more than she had ever dared reveal even to herself. No, the videos don't give her the opportunity to pick and choose what she remembers.

But that's what she needs right now. Nostalgia is one thing, objective assessment is another. At least this way Lizzie can watch the videos without the myriad of opinions that accompany the YouTube videos. Each lilt in her voice, every unconscious eye flutter toward William Darcy (since when did her eyes flutter?), have been poked and prodded on the internet, but that's not where she needs to be right now.

Still unplugged from the greater internet world, but tuning into what's important. That's where she needs to be right now. No matter how painful the experience may be.


End file.
